The Physician of Traditional Medicine Returns from Murim

Naturally, I was the first to notice that Park Seon-yun was sufficiently healthy.

But it wasn’t long before Seol Yu-hee and Seo In-ae, who had been observing him at the front desk and in the treatment room, also realized that further treatment was unnecessary.

His changed walking posture, the feel of his muscle fibers when removing needles, and above all, the content of our conversations. Unlike early in his treatment when he would describe his symptoms, lately he had been preoccupied with observing his surroundings.

“He must be interested in the Doctor, right?”

It was just another ordinary day when work finished a bit early. After Park Seon-yun and Kim Jin-sang left, with the timing sharp for an early departure, Seol Yu-hee excitedly opened her mouth, unlike Seo In-ae who was hurriedly changing clothes.

“Anyone can see that.”

If work had finished at 59 minutes past, she would have vanished like the wind, but as it was only 51 minutes past, Seo In-ae joined in the chitchat.

“Eh, if he’s interested in anyone, it must be Yu-hee-ssi.”

I said this as I came out after changing clothes before the two of them and shutting down the computer.

“What? No way! Why would a chaebol young master like me?”

Seol Yu-hee waved her hands in shock at my assertion.

“You’re pretty, aren’t you?”

“What are you talking about!”

“She is a beauty.”

Seo In-ae seemed to agree with me, adding a word.

“Well… Dr. Chu is pretty too, and actress Park Se-sun, no. If he wanted, he could probably even be introduced to much prettier celebrities through the actress.”

Seol Yu-hee argued, but she was different from just having harmonious features.

Of course, Chu Mi-young was also beautiful enough to work as an influencer, but Seol Yu-hee had a unique atmosphere characteristic of people with strong yin energy.

You could say she was strangely chilling yet made you want to warmly embrace her.

“Eek! Honestly, the look in his eyes is different. Every time Park Seon-yun looks at the Doctor, he seems to be itching to say something! Sunbae, you think so too, right?”

Seol Yu-hee sought agreement from Seo In-ae.

And Seo In-ae’s answer was:

“…Maybe.”

Wrong. Seo In-ae was already just looking at the clock. It was impossible to tell if she was answering carelessly out of disinterest or if she was sincere.

“It could be neither. He might just be someone who enjoys getting acupuncture.”

“How could there be such a person in this world?!”

I suggested a third possibility, but Seol Yu-hee made a big X with her arms.

“Why not? You enjoy it every time you get treatment, don’t you?”

“I ask for it because I can clearly feel my body improving after treatment! On a busy day like today, I would have collapsed long ago in the past, but I’m still full of energy! If I were originally healthy, I wouldn’t get it!”

Is that so?

I thought she liked it because she always looked very refreshed when I opened her meridians to help with qi circulation.

Was she actually enduring it?

“Yijin’s knee has been healed for a long time, but she still comes occasionally for maintenance.”

“Come to think of it, she’s a bit suspicious too. Don’t you think she likes the director?”

“Yu-hee-ssi… Even in youth, the world can’t be that full of love, can it?”

I shook my head as if to say it was hopeless.

Does it really look that way? Or is she very lonely? Should I introduce someone to her as part of employee welfare?

Right, once it’s confirmed that Park Seon-yun isn’t interested in Seol Yu-hee, I should look into it.

“Alright. Next time he comes, I’ll ask him directly.”

“What? Who?”

“Park Seon-yun, of course.”

Seol Yu-hee blinked, dumbfounded.

Her face seemed to ask if it was okay to ask a patient such a question, no matter what.

“Oh, oh oh. If it turns out to be not true…”

“Well, what does it matter? I’ll just be a woman with excessive self-consciousness.”

People can have misunderstandings sometimes in life, can’t they?

◆◇◆◇◆

Although I had decided to choose a moment of embarrassment over continued frustration, Park Seon-yun didn’t show up for nearly a month.

Until Park Se-sun’s friendliness level hit MAX, neither he nor Kim Jin-sang made an appearance.

If he had shown up at this frequency from the start, I wouldn’t have paid any attention, thinking his muscles were just getting stiff.

But he had been acting extremely suspiciously for a while, and Park Seon-yun was lurking outside the consultation room again today, so I caught him without hesitation.

And when I asked him point-blank what I had been curious about, his answer was:

“Y-yes, yes yes yes, yes? Did I really look that way?”

He stammered, glaring at his cousin sister.

“I didn’t say anything.”

Park Se-sun, of course, shrugged her shoulders.

She really hadn’t said anything. More precisely, she had forgotten to answer and gone home after laughing and suddenly experiencing a biological urge.

“Then, why did you think that?”

“Wouldn’t anyone see it that way?”

It was Park Se-sun who said this. As expected, it wasn’t just me and our staff who had strange thoughts.

“The three of us talked about it, and I thought Seon-yun might be interested in Yu-hee, while this friend thought he might be interested in me.”

“I vote for the director too.”

Seo In-ae added a word, waving her chart.

Park Seon-yun was extremely flustered.

“Could it be neither? I had a third possibility in mind. Perhaps you derive pleasure from being pricked by needles…”

“Pff… hehe!”

The two staff members shook their heads with disgusted faces, insisting it definitely wasn’t that.

Park Se-sun covered her mouth, unable to contain her laughter even though it was the second time she’d heard this.

“Alright, that was just a joke, so relax.”

I patted Park Seon-yun’s shoulder to reassure him.

He had been opening and closing his mouth, unable to find words, but now he finally sighed in relief.

“If you don’t want to be misunderstood, just tell us clearly. If it’s not a person, are you interested in the medicine after all?”

It was understandable for him to be interested in his cousin’s consultation.

But last time, when I was preparing Grandmother Heo Soon-nam’s back pain medicine, he had also lingered near the consultation room, pretending to drink water.

Even without trying to sense it, my qi perception is always open to at least the range of the clinic’s interior.

“Well…”

It wouldn’t be of any help to a businessman like him to hear about that, so why?

As I pressed him, Park Seon-yun finally opened his mouth.

“It’s a bit difficult to say here, I need to prepare myself mentally.”

But he stalled again.

Do you know how many months it’s been since we met? I was dumbfounded.

“I’ll make a restaurant reservation and text you. Please give me your number.”

But this time, it seemed to be real.

Unlike just moments ago when he was flustered and disheveled, he had returned to a somewhat businesslike expression and tone.

He took out my business card from his bag. It looked crumpled, like the card I had handed him from the desk on the day he first came.

‘Surely he didn’t fail to contact me because my phone number wasn’t actually written on it?’

I glanced at Seol Yu-hee, and she was raising both fists, mouthing “Fighting!”

The face that had been so pale before was now flushed red.

Anyway, it seemed both hypotheses I had mentioned were wrong.

◆◇◆◇◆

I was concerned about how long this so-called mental preparation would take, but fortunately, a text message came that very evening.

It was a long message that seemed endless no matter how much I scrolled, but the gist was roughly this:

He’s sorry for being rude.

He had intended to say something at first but gave up because it seemed completely impossible.

But he kept lingering due to lingering attachment.

He absolutely had no bad intentions.

He’s sorry for acting in a way that could be misunderstood.

And because he’s too busy this month, come to a certain fine dining restaurant at 8 PM on Sunday.

Except for the last part, it was all unnecessary talk.

Hmm, I suppose he’ll tell me what he wanted to say when I get there.

Was he really just busy during that month of seclusion?

[Alright. See you then.]

My reply was very concise.

And we met at 8 PM on Sunday.

I wondered what fine dining was, but it seemed to be high-end cuisine served in courses.

It was a restaurant with much nicer interior than the place where I had eaten with Jung In-sung’s mother, and I was immediately guided to a private room upon arrival.

“Hello~”

Unlike me in my ordinary work clothes, Park Seon-yun was dressed sharply in a suit, just like when we first met.

He must have come after finishing the work he said he was busy with, but he looked like someone asking for a date, just as I had joked.

“Hello.”

Perhaps because this space was much more familiar to him than to me, he appeared relaxed, unlike when he came as a patient and was awkward.

Was his title Director? Head of Department? I couldn’t remember exactly, but it was high anyway. Even if he was a parachute hire, there’s a saying that the position makes the person, so he could at least put on a plausible appearance.

“My Nuna also asked me to send her regards.”

We just saw each other three days ago, what’s this about.

Along with the appetizer came a lengthy explanation of the food, and we exchanged some small talk for a while.

But since we both clearly had something we wanted to discuss, it didn’t take long to get to the main point.

“I’m truly sorry. I talked with my Nuna, and I must have seemed like a really strange person. You must have been very uncomfortable.”

This was an apology I had already received in his long text message.

It was strange, but I wasn’t particularly uncomfortable. Unlike that stalker who had followed Chu Mi-young, whose eyes were clearly deranged at first glance, Park Seon-yun was completely different from that type of case.

“There’s no need to apologize. You seemed to have something you wanted to say, but you kept hesitating, so I was just curious.”

“That’s right. I guess I was completely seen through from the start.”

Park Seon-yun nodded lightly.

“So, what exactly was that ‘something you wanted to say’?”

“…Well, that is.”

For a moment, Park Seon-yun’s eyes flashed.

And he grabbed my hand.

“Would you like to do a business venture with our company? We’ll provide full support!”

“A business?”

So it was about business after all? A proposal within expectations.

I sighed. The answer was already prepared.

I was just about to refuse, saying I didn’t have any particular items to offer…

“Although PK Bio doesn’t make up a large portion of the PK Group, it’s the subsidiary my grandfather cares about the most. I can do more than you might think.”

But he continued talking without giving me a chance to speak.

Except when receiving acupuncture, he had always seemed calm and neat, so I thought if he brought up a business proposal, it would be based on logic, but on the contrary, Park Seon-yun’s voice was excited.

“Have you ever read my grandfather’s autobiography?”

“No.”

I answered sharply as soon as the microphone came to me.

I wonder if Seo In-ae might have read it?

Although PK is one of the top ten conglomerates in Korea, I never had the hobby of reading chaebol chairman autobiographies to begin with.

Even the autobiography of ‘that person’, probably the only one I’d read in my life, I had burned with the Three Mysteries True Fire.

“R-right. Then I’ll just briefly explain!”

“Okay.”

I’ll just listen to the prepared presentation.

I leaned back in my chair leisurely.

“When my grandfather came to Seoul from the countryside and fell seriously ill while doing construction work, there was a uisaeng who helped him.”

TN: Uisaeng (의생 / 醫生) is a term in Korean that literally translates to “medical student” or “medical practitioner.” Historically, it was used during the Joseon Dynasty to refer to people who were training in traditional Korean medicine or served as apprentice physicians. The term combines “ui” (의 / 醫) meaning “medicine” or “doctor,” and “saeng” (생 / 生) meaning “student” or “life.” While it is less commonly used in modern language, it still appears in historical or literary contexts referring to a physician-in-training.

Park Seon-yun closed his eyes and immersed himself in the story.

Uisaeng? How far back are we going? This was truly a word I hadn’t heard in decades.

Memories from the medical history class I took in pre-med came flooding back.

During the Japanese colonial period, they degraded Joseon’s Korean medicine doctors to uisaeng, then abolished schools and excluded them from public healthcare. It was a word that had completely disappeared into history after the Korean medicine doctor system was established following independence.

“Did your grandfather recover completely after taking that medicine?”

“Yes. And later, after achieving great success in business, he sought out that person and asked what medicine had treated him.”

“Hmm, was it perhaps Ssanghwa-tang?”

“How did you know?!”

Park Seon-yun’s eyes widened.

I had just guessed, but it was correct.

“If he fell ill rather than getting injured from physical labor, Ssanghwa-tang would be perfect for that.”

“You’re truly amazing.”

Park Seon-yun marveled, but any Korean medicine doctor would prescribe Ssanghwa-tang in the same situation. Of course, some might prescribe Sipjeondaebo-tang or Ssanggeum-tang, but the general principle of the medicine was to double nourish qi and blood.

“To return to the story, my grandfather essentially entrusted PK Bio to that person, and they succeeded in commercializing and selling fatigue recovery products like Ssanghwa-tang, as well as digestive aids and hangover cures. They’re still steady-selling products to this day.”

“He must have been a capable person in business as well.”

“Yes.”

Hm? Something…

Park Seon-yun’s gaze was strange.

Of course, it had been flashing from earlier, but this was beyond that.

Is this what they call the madness in clear eyes?

“Grandfather called that person his lifesaver and soulmate.”

“Ah, I see…”

Park Seon-yun said in a subdued voice.

His soul’s what? That’s going too far suddenly. Are there many parts of the story omitted because I showed disinterest?

“There were many crises in the process of growing the company, but grandfather particularly told the story of that uisaeng until our ears wore out. Other relatives got tired of it, but I, I loved hearing it no matter how many times! Maybe that’s why I ended up joining the bio division.”

It’s not ‘maybe’, that’s exactly why.

Even without reading the autobiography, I could guess what Park Seon-yun wanted to say.

“You have an unexpectedly romantic side. So… are you asking me to become your uisaeng?”

This guy, he was a fool for romance!

It seemed he had unleashed the restraints he had been holding back with reason.